Thursday, 20 November 2014

Media in the service of Israel’s enemies.

Gross distortions in media
coverage of the recent Jerusalem synagogue massacre, coming so soon after the
gross media distortions in the Gaza conflict, in both cases leaves a feeling of
a media that hits on Israel while giving Palestinian terror a free pass. It
leads us to ask why?

Try some of these major Western
media headlines and feeds to understand the bias of what you would assume to be
leading professional media outlets;

Initial BBC headlines shouted, “Jerusalem
synagogue attack kills 4 Israelis.” No Palestinians, no terrorists, it was
a synagogue that killed Israelis, not even identifying the victims killed as
Jews, or Palestinian Arabs as the perpetrators.

It was blindingly obvious to
everyone that this slaughter of Jews at prayer was a terror incident but the BBC
had to qualify their report by tagging on the preface, “What police say was
a ‘terror attack’…” hinting that the definition of the attacks was defined
by the police and not what the evidence clearly showed.

CBC Canada tweeted, “Israeli
police fatally shoot two after an apparent synagogue attack.” Why was the
attack only “apparent” and not obvious to CBC? And what happened to the
identity of the attackers and, of course, the missing murdered Jews? How many
were there and how were they killed? You wouldn't know from their headline. The
lingering impression is that it was the Israeli police that did the killing.
They were the only ones named by CBC.

CNN led their report with “4
Israelis, 2 Palestinians killed in synagogue attack, Israeli police say.” Notice
the neutrality of who were the victims and were who the attackers. I doubt that
this is not what the Israeli police said. I am pretty sure they said what
happened, who the terrorist perpetrators were, and who the victims were. I am
also pretty sure that CNN knew this as they put out this feed which equates
Palestinian killers with Israelis (read “Jewish”) at prayer.

Another CNN headline said, “6
people killed…” again without differentiating between Palestinian
terrorists and Jewish victims.

CBS, Nora O’Donnell called the
Jerusalem synagogue attacked by hatchet-wielding Arabs a “contested
religious site.” Here is what she said;

“Two Palestinian attackers
died in a shootout with police. It happened at a contested religious site in
Jerusalem…”

Notice she listed the two dead
Palestinians. No mention of murdered Israelis or Jews. No mention of the site
of the massacre being a synagogue. To her it was a “contested religious
site.” Her viewers may be forgiven for assuming that, with the opening
words referring to Palestinians, the religious site would be a mosque, not a
Jewish synagogue.

CBS later failed to air footage
of Palestinian Arabs dancing and celebrating the slaughter of Jews in
Jerusalem.

The Irish Times led their report
with the headline, “Four killed in attack on Jerusalem synagogue,”
thereby failing to identify the attackers and the victims in yet another bland
neutral banner. Later, it was amended to
“five killed” as further reports came in. At the foot of their article
they arbitrarily pegged this incident to the murder of a Palestinian teenager
back in July, quoting unnamed “residents” as their source. The Irish Times made no reference to the ongoing
religious-based incitement emanating from the Palestinian Authority as being a
more feasible spark for the synagogue massacre.

Similar headlines came from Sky
News, “Six dead after Jerusalem synagogue attack.” Again, no
identification, in their headline, that the majority of the dead were Jews.
Compare that with Sky headlines during the recent Gaza conflict. Most of their reports
named Palestinians as casualties. “Five Palestinians killed in Gaza strike.”
“Gaza: 100 Palestinian killed in one day.” Their headlines in Jerusalem
failed to identify the perpetrators where, in their Gaza reporting, they fell
over themselves to include ‘Israel” into headlines of the military aspect of
the conflict. They did it even when it was Hamas that repeatedly reignited the
violence as in “Israel resumes assault on Gaza as truce ends.”

The media knee-jerk response that
gives no credit to Israel is troubling. It has become stock in trade journalism
to position headlines and lead-ins as Israel’s fault, granting Palestinians a
get-out-of-jail free card, or sterilizing the story intro to a moral equivalence
between intentional Palestinian murderers and Israeli victims that deprives the
readers or viewers of basic truths. As I write in my book, it is a media in the
service of Israel’s enemies.

The hypocrisy behind such
reporting by British, Canadian, and American media sources is that their
reporting is completely different and to the point when their countries are hit
with similar terrorism.

It is only then that they find
their journalistic moral compass when reporting the news.